Tools not Rules

The more you know the more you realize how little you know. It’s so much easier to embrace new ideas and information when you push the ego to the side. Life is easier, and more interesting, when you accept that you don’t have all the answers. New solutions present themselves, you allow yourself to be taught by students, employees and people from other backgrounds. You grow.

Great ideas come from all directions and absolute statements can often be the box that limits us. Absolute statements might serve the needs of bigots, politicians and the insecure but you’re better than that. Sure, there are some truths that we accept to be true: gravity, our dependence on oxygen, the thing I’m looking at is called a computer, etc. But even those things have different names in different languages. Often the ideas we spend so much time and energy defending are simply a different way to explain a similar idea or need.

Even statements that are true at face value are worth questioning. Is the sky blue? No, not always. And what does ‘blue’ mean? Ten people imagining a blue sky will have a different image in their mind. An individual who grew up in Beijing will associate a different color sky from the person who grew up in Malibu. Not too long ago people accepted that the world was flat. What other things do we accept as truth that might be disproved over time? What things do you accept as truth that are the adoption of someone else’s values?

Set your ego aside and allow yourself to be a student. Question any individual or statement that seeks limit your understanding of the world. Accept constraints and definitions when they help you but don’t accept them blindly. Be curious, question everything.